Gwen Gibbs said it’s the phone call you never want to get in the middle of the night — but she got it.

The Kinston mother was sound asleep when her daughter’s call interrupted her slumber, spiraling Gibbs into unexpected terror: “Billy’s been shot.”

She left her Kinston home around 3:30 a.m. on Nov. 25 for the Waffle House at 601 E. New Bern Road.

She didn’t make it to her son in time.

William “Billy” Gibbs III, 26, was shot and killed by an off-duty Lenoir County Sherriff’s Office deputy, Joseph Heck, after a fight broke out at the city's lone Waffle House restaurant. A LCSO press release stated Heck and Deputy William Shambeau commanded Gibbs to drop his weapon, a hand gun. When he allegedly did not comply, Heck drew his gun and shot.

Gwen Gibbs said that report was odd to her.

“I taught my children to follow directions,” she said. “I feel like if you told my son to freeze, or if you told him to put his weapon down, he put his hands up in the air.”

Gibbs was joined by William Gibbs Jr. — from whom she separated when their son was in seventh grade — and daughter Shamoni, 25, last week on her 55th birthday to offer their perspective in the family’s first public speaking since Billy’s November death.

“Today is my birthday,” Gwen Gibbs said. “It’s hard because he always made sure he was the first person to call or text me.”

The family unanimously agreed that he was their “protector,” a hard worker and a quiet man who stayed out of trouble.

“He worked hard, that was his thing,” Gibbs said. “His lifetime ambition was to live in a small town. That was it. You can’t find anyone who can say anything bad about my son.”

Billy Gibbs, a 2004 Kinston High School graduate, attended N.C. State University to study engineering for three years. His family said he was hands-on and mathematically inclined. He was in academically gifted and various sports programs while attending school in Kinston.

His only previous brushes with the law had come on two misdemeanor convictions of drug possession in 2006 and 2009, for which he had received probation and community service, according to the N.C. Department of Correction website. He was also due in court for DWI charges before his death.

But the Gibbs' family remembers him for the good.

“We’ve actually sat and watched a whole first half of a football game (when) I’m at my house, he’s at his house and we’re on the phone hooting and hollering like we’re in the same room,” William Gibbs Jr. said. “Things like that you can’t replace.”

Page 2 of 4 - While more than three months have passed since Billy’s death, the family is still uncertain about where the investigation stands — which has been turned over to the State Bureau of Investigation — and troubled by multiple conflicting reports.

The fateful night

When Gwen Gibbs learned her son was transported to Lenoir Memorial Hospital on that bitter night only days after Thanksgiving, she headed there to meet her daughter, who’d known about the shooting early on — she was with him less than an hour before he died.

“I was actually informed by accident,” Shamoni Gibbs said.

Someone called Shamoni Gibbs’ friend’s phone, which she happened to answer: “Yo, you need to get back out here. They just shot Shamoni’s brother.”

She said she dropped the phone and ran to her car.

Shamoni and Billy were together at the Climax nightclub the evening of the shooting. When they were leaving, he told her he wasn’t going to the Waffle House afterwards, but wound up there to deliver a cell phone his friend left in his car.

“I had just left him; we had all went out together,” she said. “My mind was in a million places.”

She said when she arrived on the scene, emergency services had not yet shown up. She wasn’t able to get past authorities to help her brother; Shamoni Gibbs is as a nurse and wanted to help, even though she admitted nothing would have worked anyway.

“I know now, with my knowledge from school, that it was really nothing I could have done to save him,” she said. “Internally, he was bleeding too bad. Every day, I have to deal with the fact that I stood there and was not allowed to even touch him or even try.

“It was upsetting me. I’m standing there watching my brother fight to breathe because no one’s doing anything about it.”

The Gibbses were brought into a condolence room at the hospital, and Shamoni knew it was bad news: “He didn’t make it did he?”

The autopsy report by the N.C. Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Chapel Hill released to the public revealed that Billy was shot four times — in the chest, abdomen and upper thigh.

However, his parents said they viewed his lifeless body and witnessed otherwise.

“We stood there for 10 (to) 20 minutes and at first all we saw was four shots,” William Gibbs Jr. said. “I started touching him, moving his arm around, examining his body. There was a fifth shot.”

He demonstrated to a reporter by pointing to the lower shoulder blade area.

The Gibbs also said the position of the wounds were four aligned shots going down Billy’s side, with the fifth on the lower shoulder blade area.

Page 3 of 4 - “If (Billy was) refusing, you would have mangled his arm,” said Gibbs Jr., who works as a nightclub security guard. “You could have shot my son in the knee to knock him down … and gain control of the situation. Each shot was a kill shot.

“Those types of things I definitely want … to make known.”

The law

N.C. General Statute 15A-401 outlines when law enforcement is justified to use deadly force upon another person, which includes when the officer feels it’s “reasonably necessary” to defend him or herself or a third party from imminent use of a deadly force.

“A lot of them are really great (and) really kind, I won’t take that from the police officers,” Gwen Gibbs said, “but I do believe a lot of times they just overreact.”

With the investigation ongoing, The Free Press cannot confirm if Deputy Joseph Heck explicitly claimed imminent danger, although Gibbs said she’s seen reports that claim Heck, in fact, declared the clause, which protects him in the shooting death of Billy Gibbs.

Heck was contacted by The Free Press to comment on the case, but said Interim Sheriff Chris Hill advised him not to speak during the investigation.

“That’s not to say that once it’s over I wouldn’t be willing to talk,” Heck said over the phone Monday. “Out of respect for the investigation and everything that’s going on, I would just rather hold off right now.”

He said his silence was not meant as disrespect to the Gibbs family or the media.

Although he and William Shambeau were off-duty — working security — at the time of the Waffle House shooting, they are able to activate their duties any time in their home jurisdiction.

Heck and Shambeau were placed on administrative leave following the shooting death, but have since returned to their posts.

Hill — who will take over for W.E. Billy Smith as sheriff on April 1 — said the sheriff is who determines when deputies go on leave and return from leave with “no law to regulate that.”

Still waiting

The case is currently being investigated by the SBI, so local authorities aren’t talking, according to Gwen Gibbs.

She said she always asked Billy why he carried a gun and he’d respond it was his Second Amendment right.

“It’s a very sedating type of feeling,” William Gibbs Jr. said about his son’s death. “It’s gut-wrenching. There’s a part of me that want to put the cameras on … but that’s not my job. My job today is to remind everyone a positive flower has been plucked for a very, very non-understanding reason.

Page 4 of 4 - “I can’t say that no plainer, no clearer or no softer.”

When Billy had his gun drawn, he was allegedly firing at a third party — who was shooting at him, according to his family. However, no police report states Gibbs was being fired upon.

“The person who shot at Billy first — while Billy was being shot — was allowed to run around the parking lot and drive right off,” William said. “That is very, very hard for us to digest.”

The family said they believe that part of the investigation is being overlooked. His mother believes her son was a target.

“Young black males are being killed (and) consumed,” she said. “It’s the cemetery or prison. You can’t question (law enforcement) because either you’re going to be left lying on the ground like my child, or something else.”

As the Gibbs family reflected on Billy’s personality and hardworking habits, they said they’ve not yet had closure, and each day is rough. They said the public, including neighbors and Billy’s former educators, have helped lift them as they wait for answers.

“(Billy) had a family, he believed in family and it reflected in his daily living,” William said. “To the public, the family is begging somebody to tell the truth, the whole truth, on what happened.”

Jessika Morgan can be reached at 252-559-1078 or at jessika.morgan@kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessikaMorgan.